


Bad Day

by Lisse



Series: Swampverse [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mystery Character(s), POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-08
Updated: 2006-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 21:49:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisse/pseuds/Lisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His old man wears an Earth Kingdom name like a shirt that doesn't fit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Day

__

Bad Day

The war went badly.

That's the only answer Chiyu's old man ever gives - and not for lack of coaxing, because Chiyu talks and talks and _talks_ and tries to ambush him with questions, hoping that he'll let something slip. But he's too clever for that. He was a soldier, and all that matters is that the war went badly.

Chiyu knows better than to ask whose side he was on.

*

They make their living delivering messages and goods and passengers between Ba Sing Se and the backroad villages, scuttling off the main roads when the Fire Nation patrols march past. Chiyu tugs his big round hat down to shade his eyes and watches their curly-toed boots stamp past. He is smaller than most twelve-year-olds, his brown hair tumbling out of his stubby ponytail, and he is kind and gentle and soft-hearted and should never be a threat to anyone.

But they don't see patrols very often. His old man says the most important thing about soldiers is knowing how to avoid them.

*

Chiyu loves the air and the wind and the sound of rain, and he drives the delivery cart too fast on the old backroads. When he was little he wanted to learn how to fly.

His old man likes to lean over and thwap him upside the head, right under his hat. "Calm down," he snaps. "You're worse than your father."

He yelps and pouts and is unsurprised - his real parents died a very long time ago - and always sticks out his tongue. "What'd you do _that_ for?"

"Because I can." His old man considers for a moment. "And because your father was an idiot."

There is no anger in his voice, but Chiyu steals his hat anyway and is pushed off the cart for his trouble. His father, he suspects, would have received the exact same treatment.

*

His old man teaches him how to punch and kick and four different ways to turn a Firebender's own element against them. He shows him all the easy ways to hurt someone with a tiny dagger, how to think of a long blade like it's a part of him.

Chiyu learns all this easily enough - he is slight and quick, after all, and the style suits him - and when he catches his breath he wonders about the whys of it. He can't bend earth or water or fire - and not air, of course, there are no airbenders left - and he never wants to fight anyone. What's the _point?_

"The war went badly," his old man says.

*

Some days he tries to dream up a history for them all - for his parents and himself and his old man, who still gets lost in parts of the city and wears an Earth Kingdom name like it's a shirt that doesn't fit and knows all the ways to break out of a Fire Nation prison - but he doesn't try very often. That will all come later. He can feel it the way he feels the ripples and currents in the air, the way he's too light and too fast for his age, like the wind is lifting him up.

For now there is work to be done and things to learn, because he _must_ learn while there is someone to teach him. That's just the way things are. Chiyu knows that nothing lasts forever, and that maybe someday he will be the instructor.

What he could possibly teach anyone is beyond him.

*

And then the letters start getting thicker and the packages get bigger and there's more and more passengers heading south - "it won't help them," his old man mutters - and there are rumors of problems in the north, of the Water Tribe and its warriors beating back a Fire Nation fleet and of Earthbending bandits throwing supply convoys into chaos. There are whispers of the Avatar, and Chiyu thinks he can hear voices in the air.

"He should be your age," his old man says suddenly, matter-of-factly. "Younger."

Chiyu almost rolls a barrel onto his foot. "Who?"

"The Avatar. He'll be with the waterbenders."

" _Why?_ " He drapes himself over the barrel and squints up from under his hat. "How'd you know that?"

"Because he's the Avatar," his old man says without so much as looking at him, "and the Avatar is always an idiot."

*

Not long after it's illegal to talk about the Avatar or the Water Tribe or the bandits, except that everyone knows Fire Lady Azula wants them all dead. Sometimes posters go up, with rewards and dead-or-alive all over the place, and Chiyu takes to going barefoot like the bandits and twisting his hair into a topknot like the waterbenders' scowling leader.

His old man tells him to put his boots and hat back on and to stop being stupid.

*

One day the Fire Nation comes to Ba Sing Se in earnest - hundreds of soldiers, although they must be needed up north - and he and his old man watch them with the rest of the silent crowd.

"Why'd they come here?" he whispers.

His old man's good eye is narrowed and his scarred fingers are curled into fists. "They're looking for someone."

He feels like he's trying to find his way through a storm, and just for a moment he wishes he could really fly. "Who?"

But his old man just grabs him by the wrist and hauls him back through the crowd, away from the main streets and the firebenders. He feels the wind ready to lift him up and away, great gusts twisting around his hands like he could reach out and touch them, and his stomach knots up in a kind of belated, mute horror.

That is all the answer he needs.

*

His old man dresses him for a long journey, bundling food and blankets into a pack and knotting his big-brimmed hat tightly under his chin. There is a certain kind of grim finality about it, like the last ceremony before a great battle, and that is how he knows that he's going north, and he'll be going alone.

But all Chiyu can think is that he is nothing special - he drives carts too fast and he fights like a firebender, like his old man - and he doesn't want to hurt anyone.

"Were you hiding me?" he asks, his shoulders squared and his jaw set, and he doesn't know how much he looks like his mother at that moment. "Am I an airbender? Why do they want to find me? _Why?_ "

His old man slides a little engraved knife into a sheath and shoves it into his hands.

"Because the war went badly," he says.


End file.
